I truly believe in the power of Prayer or otherwise I wouldn’t be posting this…. Our sweet, beautiful little angel Ashlynn is very seriously ill, we just found out today that she may have liver failure and we will be heading up to stay with her at a London Hospital to figure out what to do for her. We are completely shocked and horrified over this news. All I ask is that everyone would please say a prayer for our beautiful, beautiful baby girl, we would be forever grateful.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and his daughter. They had to try and try to get pregnant and bring her into the world and she’s only a few months old. Please join me in praying for the little baby and his family. Their last name is Beutler, if you want to say a specific prayer for them.

If you are like me, there have been times in your life when you have prayed for an answer over and over and it appears that no one is listening. Sometimes you may wonder if there is even a God at all. Sometimes you may wonder if the Divine experiences and revelations you have received were something contrived by your own mind, or not. Some may feel they haven’t ever felt God’s love in their life due to terrible circumstances. If you feel that God isn’t answering your prayers, ther is a great talk by Neal A Maxwell, former Mormon apostle: “Thanks be to God“.

Here’s an excerpt taken from the talk:

Yes, even in our prayers, we can, unintentionally, ask “amiss.” (2 Ne. 4:35.) No wonder humility is such an everlasting virtue. For us to accept God’s “No” as an affirmative indication of his love—rather than a lack thereof—and as a signal that we have asked amiss, this is true humility!

How often have you and I in our provincialism prayed to see ahead and, mercifully, have been refused, lest our view of the present be blurred?

How many times have we been blessed by not having our prayers answered, at least according to the specifications set forth in our petitions?

How many times have frustrating, even gruelling, experiences from which we have sought relief turned out, later on, to have been part of a necessary preparation which led to much more happiness?

“And now when Alma heard this … he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word.” (Alma 32:6; italics added.)

How many times have we impatiently expressed our discontent with seemingly ordinary and routine circumstances which were divinely designed, shaping circumstances for which, later on, we were very grateful? Alas, have there perhaps not also been those times when we have been grumpy with God or, unlike Job, even “charged God foolishly”? (Job 1:22.) How many times, naively, have we vigorously protested while on our way to a blessing?

Therefore, our faith in and thanksgiving for Heavenly Father, so far as this mortal experience is concerned, consists—not simply of a faith and gladness that he exists—but also includes faith and thanksgiving for his tutoring of us to aid our acquisition of needed attributes and experiences while we are in mortality. We trust not only the Designer but also his design of life itself—including our portion thereof!

I really like this quote because many times in my life I’ve prayed for something I think I wanted and God was patiently waiting for me to be ready to receive it.

For example, I prayed for a number of years to meet a good lady to marry and start a family with. However, whenever I met a lady who I thought would be good, I felt God was telling me to wait. Sometimes I would try and force a relationship against the will of God and of course the relationship wouldn’t work. It wasn’t until I humbled myself and realized I had some personal issues with feelings of abandonment and anxiety that I needed to overcome that I realized God was being merciful to me (and the girls I had been trying to force things with) by not giving me the “green light” so to speak to get into a serious relationship. After I had dealt with overoming my feelings of anxiety, depression, and abandonment (which you can read more about in detail here), did God place a lady in my life.

What experiences have you had with feeling that God wasn’t answering your prayers, only to find that He really was listening?

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If you’re an NFL fan, like I am, you’ve probably been amazed by the turnaround of the Denver Broncos season since their evangelical Quarterback, Tim Tebow began starting for them. Watching him for most of a football game is painful. He misses passes constantly, hardly converts on 3rd downs, and overthrows his wide-receivers. On paper his statistics from a passing perspective look awful.

Yet, somehow he keeps pulling wins out by some miracle in every game.

When he scores a touchdown, he drops to a knee and starts praying. This is his signature thing to do and it actually has a nickname now. People call it “Tebowing“. Here’s an example:

Some people like it, and some people are highly annoyed by it.

When we look in the scriptures, we see some examples of people being condemned for praying in public such as when Jesus tells us to pray in our closets rather than making it a big scene in public, but also many instances where people prayed in public such as Daniel in the Bible and Nephi in the Book of Mormon.

So where do you stand on the issue? Do you feel it’s over the top to pray in public (i.e. “Tebowing“) or do you feel it’s o.k.?

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You amy have a child with whom you are struggling. When appropriate, kneeling in prayer with the child could have a much greater impact than anything you might say in resoning with him or her. Children need to see prayer in action. They need to feel it. Then comes the witness (of the Holy Spirit), which is so important.

I have often said something to missionaries that also applies to parents. The primary objective of a missionary is to provide a spiritual experience to the investigator. Similarly, the single greatest thing you can do for your…children…is to give them a spiritual experience. Help them to experience the Spirit with you, and then teach them how to have the experience alone….it’s worth more than all the instruction you could provide on the subject…(pg. 43-44)

Gene R. Cook was the area Seventy in my mission (for those who are not familiar with the LDS, or Mormon structure, the seventies are similar to the structure found in the book of Acts where the Apostles appoint people (seventies) to oversee geographical areas of the Church). He shared similar stories with us and taught us how to teach people to experience God on our lives through teaching them to pray by kneeling down with them. I had many great experiences on my mission by doing this.

Of all the experiences I’ve been able to share with teaching people about prayer, the one I had with my little 2 1/2 year old daughter the other night was one of my favorites.

She was scared and said there were monsters in her room. She was sobbing uncontrollably and I first tried reasoning with her. That wasn’t working at all. Then I remembered Gene R. Cook’s words in his book and also on my mission and I asked her to fold her arms and pray with me. I told her I would say the words and then she could repeat them. She said, in her cute little voice “alright”. We prayed. It was a simple prayer. I said things like “please take the monsters away” and “bless I’ll be calm” and after a few moments I felt the Holy Spirit enter into my heart. As I felt the Spirit, I could notice a change in her physically as well. She relaxed and sighed relief.

After the prayer was over, I asked if she felt better. She nodded and then I told her that she can pray to Heavenly Father anytime she’s scared and He will take away the fear and replace it with good things. She smiled and said “alright” and then snuggled down and within a few minutes was asleep.

What a miracle!

I’m so grateful for the power of faith and prayer and that God will answer the simplest prayers. I know that if we strive to incorporate prayer in with leading our families that the Lord will guide us as parents and the Holy Spirit will help us more than we could ever do on our own.

Do you have any experiences with prayer and your children that you feel would be helpful for other readers?

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I liked reading your letter on God and receiving his message through understanding of God´s manner of speaking.
I have been reading very much and watching Daystar programs considerably. All of these things are interesting but the more I read the Bible and meditate, pray, and listen for that voice of God— the farther and farther from understanding anything it seems.

If I continue to understand less and less as there is so much contradiction, the natural process would be to become an athiest. Something I am not hoping for.

But my simple and nieve question is– If God can do anything, why can´t he communicate with us?

After all that silly business of speaking in tongues is accepted as real and I think is nonsense. Is that God speaking to us?
I wish I could find some message that felt like it really represented our relation to God, if there is indeed a relation.

I feel that it would be beneficial for the reader to see other people’s responses though rather than just mine. Take some time to pray and ask God to help this reader before you respond. I have faith it will help him.

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My Grandfather recently passed down a lot of the books in his library and one of the books I picked up is entitled “LDS Adventure Stories” by Preston Nibley.

One of the stories I read tonight was one of the most amazing accounts of bravery and faith I’ve ever read. It details a plane crash in Alaska in Joseph H. Tippetts’ own words and was published in the Improvement Era in October of 1943. If you are a member of gospelink.com you can look up the account and read it online.

I was going to write a detailed article of the story, but upon reasearching the lds blogs I found details of this event are given nicely in a blog called “Alaskan Odyssey” written about a year ago, which includes pictures from the crash.

It is a miracle that 4 men survived the plane crash and lived for a month in the harsh Alaska winter. They all had broken bones, yet had to struggle to survive the weather and when a search party gave up looking for them, all they could do was pray and work to find assistance. The hardships that were endured and overcome are miraculous. Brother Tippetts gives an amazing account of how faith, patience, prayer, and God’s providence kept he and his companions alive. He also accredits the Bible and Book of Mormon and a book called Unto the Hills by Richard L Evans as books that kept his faith strong throughout the trial in the wilderness.

Joseph Tippett’s concluding words in his account show his humility and faith:

In looking back over our experience I can truthfully say that God was good to us. we can give him credit for leading the boat to our rescue. The captain of the boat had gone over thrity-five miles off his course to come into that little bay to rescue us. He was influenced to come to that spot in answer to prayer. We regard it as a modern miracle. The influence of the faith and prayers of our good wives and friends did much to bring us safely home…we join in thanking God for performing a miracle in our behalf. May we ever remain faithful to him.

Also just last week, Joseph Tippett’s son appeared as a guest blogger and wrote about more details of Joseph Tippett’s life and you can read this account here.

After reading this, I feel amazed at what God can help us accomplish when we put our trust and faith in Him.

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Periodically I read the blog Musings on Mormonism. It is a blog from a former LDS member who is juggling family and spirituality and posts blogs that for the most part appear to be sincere.

The other day I read the post entitled “Can our Hearts be Trusted“. She describes how praying and receiving an answer from God isn’t legitimate because our hearts can decieve us. She then goes on to state the only thing we can trust is God’s word and nothing else.

This statement was very amazing to me for a number of reasons. First, how are we to know God’s word if we can’t recognize and discern his voice? Next, in my opinion it is borderline blasphemy to say that God can’t answer prayers and speak to our hearts through not only feelings, but in our minds and through scriptures as well. Finally, I feel that it is a tool from Satan to deceive us into thinking that we do not need to pay attention to the feelings and promptings God gives us. It states in scripture that God speaks to us in our minds and in our hearts through feelings, visions, scriptures, and other means such as prophecy.

The question then is how do we learn to discern between what our desires are and what God’s desires are? Furthermore, if one claims to be a prophet and speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost as the prophets of the New Testament did, how are we to know if what they are saying is truth? Many people may answer this by saying to look it up in the Bible and that will confirm the truth. However, how is one to know what truth is when reading in the Bible or any other scripture for that matter? Clearly the answer is through the Holy Ghost. But once again, the question arises how do we know if what we are feeling is from God or just our own desires? Worse yet, how do we know what we feel isn’t Satan trying to deceive us?

These thoughts caused me to reflect on a post I wrote about 2 years ago called “Receiving and Recognizing Answers to Prayers.” In this post and especially in the comments by other readers, there are common threads on how we can live our lives in tune so we can receive and recognize answers to our prayers.

In one of the threads, it discusses how God will send us the Holy Ghost through feelings accompanied with a positive conviction. Personally, I feel that all inspiration we receive should be backed up, as our “musings” friend alludes to with the scriptures.

From my own personal experience, I know this is a truth: God speaks to us through His Holy Spirit and we feel this many times as a burning in the bosom, or exceeding joy that is more than just our own made-up desires that confirms all truth. We do need to learn and practice to discern from our own feelings and God speaking to us though.

Personally, I feel that our friend over at Musings has it 1/2 right. We do need to test our answers to the Word of God and not soley rely on a desire…especially if we’re not sure if it’s from God or not. We shouldn’t rely soley on just our feelings and also it is important to have had a witness of what scripture is truth and this will come through an answer from the Holy Spirit as well.

I know we can learn to recognize and discern between Heavenly Father’s promptings and our own desires.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

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For those of you who are LDS or attend meetings, how often have you heard the phrase “When I was on my mission…”? If you’re like me, it’s a phrase you hear almost as much as “I know this church is true.

Whenever I hear the “mission” phrase I think to myself “what about today?” Let me share an example.

Today in church we studied President Monson’s most recent article on faith and prayer. The teacher did a great thing, I thought and opened up discussion for people to share their experiences they’ve had with prayer.

As we were reading, I thought about an experience I’d had with my younger sister and thought it would be great to share. I’ll admit it. I’m guilty. I started the comment by saying “When I was on my mission I learned how to truly pray intimately with the Lord in someone’s behalf…” and then I preceded to explain a very personal and spiritual experience my sister and I had while we prayed together.

I hadn’t realized what I’d done until hands started firing up all over the place with people saying “When I was on my mission…” Suddenly, I realized what I’d done.

The whole rest of the lesson was about experiences people had had 5 -30 years ago while they were on their missions. I appreciate them sharing these comments, and have definitely been to worse meetings where people don’t even want to participate at all, but after the 5th time of hearing the “mission” phrase I started thinking about the LDS culture a bit more.

First, an LDS mission is amazing and filled with opportunities to grow closer to Jesus than almost anything else I’ve ever done. I was fully immersed in studying about the Lord and helping others. I’m sure this is why people love to talk about their missions. However, I asked myself the question: “What about today?”

That’s great that we had spiritual experiences to fall back on, but what are we doing today to have them? Maybe I’m off-base, but it seems that we as Mormons tend to fall back on our missions too often and don’t have daily spiritual experiences through faith and prayer like we once did.

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In 1966, Batsell Barrett Baxter delivered an excellent sermon entitled “As a Man Thinketh.” I HIGHLY reccomend reading it. While the whole sermon is excellent, I choose to pull the following quote from his sermon at the Hillsboro Church of Christ:

“Chronic resentments, grudges that we carry around with us, become deep-seated abscesses. They ruin our personalities. They poison our minds, and they produce diseases in our bodies. When we continue to carry them, we are slowly but surely committing suicide! The cure for a surgical abscess is incision and drainage. This makes healing possible from the inside out so that the patient is rid of the abscess once and for all. The cure of a spiritual abscess is forgiveness–real forgiveness. This heals our minds, our bodies, and our souls.”

Have you ever suffered from someone who hurt you whether intentionally or un-intentionally? Do you or have you ever suffered so much that all you can do is supress the pain and try to forget? Do you hold a grudge against someone that harmed you or a loved one? If so, then I hope that what I share in this post will bless you.

By the time I was in my late 20’s I was slowly dying both physically and spiritually. This may sound extreme, but I had been poisoned by my inability to forgive one of my parents who I felt had abandoned me after a divorce in my younger years. On the surface, I knew I needed to forgive and I tried to force myself, but nothing I did seemed to help. It became so bad that my resentment started taking over my life in my relationships with others as well as the way I viewed myself. I was sick–both physically and spiritually.

When I came to the realization that I was the one with the problem and took responsibility, that was a huge step for me. I didn’t know where to start though and how to overcome the resentment that I had harbored subconciously for so many years. I turned to the Lord in prayer asking for Him to provide a way–and he did.

A couple weeks after I had started seriously praying for an answer and way to overcome my issues with forgiveness someone I hardly knew in church came up to me and said “I have a feeling that you could use my help.” I was immediately intrigued.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I work for a lady that practices Reiki and other natural forms of healing.” she said, “You should come by.”

I’d never heard of Reiki before, but thought it was at least worth giving a try.

A week or so later I arrived at the clinic and started getting to know the “Reiki Lady”. A name that I soon started calling her that stuck. In our initial appointment I shared with her my experiences as a child. It was very painful and I was full of resentment, hurt, and anger. After our intial visit, she determined that multiple sessions were needed and I scheduled a few appointments.

For those who aren’t familiar with Reiki, it is an Asian form of natural healing in that the practioner focuses on your energy levels that your body puts out through pressure points called “chakras.” The sessions I found to be very relaxing and helpful, but my anger and resentment would still rear its ugly head along with the spiritual and physical symptoms. The spiritual symptoms would include: anger, bad habits of manipulating others especially in relationships, pessimism, a cynical outlook and behavior, and lack of trust. Physically I had depression, anxiety, and also pain in my stomach from holding the bitterness in for so many years.

During one session with the “Reiki Lady” we did something different than we had ever done before. We started normally with the sessions by getting me into a relaxed and calm state of mind. However, this time she told me she was going to do a guided imagery session to help me heal my subconsious mind. It was amazing and would take a long time to explain, but to keep this story short I was able to pull up images of myself as a child and see myself forgiving my parent for everything that had happened. It was truly a miracle. From that point forward, things started to fall into place and I was able to forgive completely and I can now say that I love and respect both of my parents completely.

My experience was different than others experiences in that it wasn’t the traditional approach. However, I know that God worked through a number of people to help answer my prayers and heal me from the poison of holding resentment.

In a way, I guess this is similar to what Glenn Beck has been sharing over on his site called Face your Storm. For those who would like to hear other stories of overcoming adversity, this is another great site.

I would love to hear others stories or thoughts on learning to forgive. Please share so we can all be uplifted.

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The title of this article intrigued me when I saw it in the “Time out For Women” flyer my wife received yesterday. This will be one of the topics in the upcoming conference and Camille Olson will be the speaker.

As I reflected on the title, I naturally thought about the Book of Psalms in the Bible. I thought of the word “psalm” and looked up the Hebrew translation for it. Here is the translation directly from the dictionary:

zÃ¢mar, zaw-mar’

Definition: a prim. root [perhaps ident. with 2168 through the idea of striking with the fingers]; prop. to touch the strings or parts of a musical instrument, i.e. play upon it; to make music, accompanied by the voice; hence to celebrate in song and music

Translated as: give praise, sing forth praises, psalms.

I thought of many of the Psalms in the Bible and how heart-felt and earnest they are. The writers of the Psalms show the depths of their souls and their relationship with the Lord as they sing praise and also share remorse for sins committed. When reading the Psalms, I definitely can feel their sense of yearning and dependance on God in joy, sadness, pain, and all walks of life.

My thoughts then turned to the title “Your own Book of Psalms.” I’m not sure what the speaker will be sharing, but I thought of how I can deepen my relationship with God by sharing Psalms with Him in three ways: prayer, writing in my journal, and writing music to the Lord.

Prayer

What my goal before I pray is to reflect on God and who He is. He is my Creator and gives me life. He loves me more than I can imagine and he loves all humankind and His creations as well. Also, before I pray it is important to consider all the many blessings I’ve received from His hand each second of the day. By doing these things I stir emotions within myself that cause me to feel humble before the Lord.

Next, I think about anyone who may need help and I try to imagine what I would feel like in their situation. I consider if there is anything I can do to help them and this stirs more emotion of helplessness and dependance on the Lord, knowing that all things are in His control.

I then think about myself and my family and the struggles we may be facing. This stirs even more emotion and I am then ready to pray…pray with emotion like a psalm.

Journal

When writing in my journal I share emotions and get them all out on paper. Sometimes as I do this I see things come out that I know I need God’s help with and I then use my journal as a means to pray and share my deepest feelings with the Lord. Other times I just write in the journal and it feels good to get all my good and bad emotions out.

Writing Songs to God

I play the guitar and sometimes I’ll just start strumming some chords and my heart is full and words will come out. Sometimes the words are from an earnest seeker, sometimes they are joyous, and other times they are songs of sadness. I’ve found though that when I express my feelings through a prayer of music to God I have felt the Holy Spirit enter into my heart many times and I feel God’s love surround me.

In closing I thought it would be fun to share part of one of my “psalms.” It is part of a song I wrote about Jesus called “Believe.”

He’ll pick you up if you take a step forward and don’t look back again.